Garments, such as infant and adult diapers, diaper covers, pants, maternity skirts, and the like, having filamentary material type fasteners, such as Velcro, to enable the size of the garment to be adjusted to individual body profiles, have recently been developed. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,475,912, a fabric diaper having a number of filamentary hook and loop fastener strips is adjustable in size by folding to accommodate infant growth. To remove lint from filamentary hooks that tends to accumulate during washing, a comb-like tool is used to manually comb lint away from the filamentary hooks.
To eliminate the necessity to manually remove lint from the filamentary hook fasteners, U.S. Pat. No. 4,475,912, to Frederica V. Coates, provides protective cover strips formed of loop type filamentary type material positioned adjacent each hook type filamentary fastener in face-to-face presentation in such a way that the protective strip and hook type fastener tend to pivot together or "self-close" during washing.
In Application Ser. No. 631,885, filed on July 18, 1984 to Coates, a diaper cover or pants is provided with filamentary hook and loop type fasteners to enable the size of the pants to be altered to accommodate different infant or adult waist and leg sizes. Self-closing filamentary loop protective covers insulate the filamentary hook fasteners during washing. Other applications of self-closing protective covers for filamentary hook fasteners in adjustable size garments are shown in copending applications Ser. No. 733,054 filed May 9, 1985, Ser. No. 733,051 filed May 9, 1985, and Ser. No. 797,807 filed Nov. 13, 1985, continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 631,885 all to Coates and Jannoni.
Although the self-closing protective cover is an effective device for virtually eliminating lint buildup on filamentary hook fasteners in domestic laundering, the fastener strips tend to wrinkle or warp during extended exposure to the higher temperatures and harsher chemicals of commercial laundering.
One object of the invention described herein, therefore, is to provide filamentary hook and loop fasteners that avoid warping and wrinkling and also resist deterioration in a commercial laundering environment as exists in nursing homes, hospitals, diaper services and other institutions.
Another object is to provide self-closing filamentary fasteners that maintain their planar shape and resist deterioration when exposed to high temperatures during washing.
An additional object is to provide a diaper, pants or other garment that uses filamentary hook and loop fasteners to provide size adjustment, wherein the filamentary fasteners are self-protected from lint buildup and avoid wrinkling or warping and deterioration during commercial laundering.
A further object is to provide self-closing filamentary fasteners of the above type, that are easily and economically manufactured, and do not detract from the appearance of a garment.
There also is a growing need for a convenient device to retain protective pad insert to the body of a wearer. The device must be comfortable and unobtrusive when worn, be easy to use, i.e., quickly attachable to and removeable from an absorbant pad, and easily maintained. Filamentary hook and loop fasteners are used conveniently as a coupling device as described in "Pending Application" Ser. No. 631,885, and continuation-in-part of 631,885 to Coates and Janoni, supra. Although satisfactory for disposable absorbant pads, there exists a need to provide a device for the retention of washable absorbant pad inserts. Because the complementary filamentary hook and loop fasteners tend to couple together throughout their contacting surfaces and resist separation, it is relatively difficult to manually open them.
An additional object of the invention, therefore, is to provide a device using filamentary hook and loop fasteners to retain a reusable absorbant pad insert to a garment.
Another object is to provide in such a device a self-closing characteristics to protect the filamentary loops from lint while enabling an individual to easily manually separate the hook and loop fasteners and thereby release the pad.